A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

6 kienzle and stoudt
Elisabeth of Schönau and Hildegard of Bingen,” Heinzer seeks to diversify
the modern notion of medieval visionary experience and the textual
records of such experience. One of the main contrasts between Hildegard
and Elisabeth manifests itself in their experience of and relationship to
the liturgy. Hildegard’s visionary ecstasy produces musical works, and
thus in a way creates liturgy. On the other hand, Elisabeth’s immersion
in liturgy, with its strongly biblically rooted texts, provides an “objective”
reference for her Christologically oriented visions. Thus, in one case vision
produces liturgy, and in the other liturgy produces vision.
The fundamental diffferences between the two visionary cultures, which
we are able to observe in Elisabeth and Hildegard, must also be considered
in relation to their biographical context. Until her death in 1163, Elisabeth
remained fijirmly in the restrictive conditions of her double monastery,
while Hildegard, after her departure from Disibodenberg, enjoyed considerable
autonomy, ruling as superior of her new foundation in Rupertsberg.
This process of charismatically legitimated emancipation from her
established monastic background might also have led to the self-assured
nonconformism of musical and textual language in her so-called liturgical
creations, which clearly and deliberately diverge from canonical tradition.
It is exactly this nonconformist aspect that seems to make Hildegard’s
writings—as an offfspring of what we might call an emancipated career—
appear more spectacular than Elisabeth’s, at least from a modern point of
view. Consequently, Hildegard rather than Elisabeth has dominated modern
scholarly and popular interest. This appears all the more interesting
when one considers the medieval resonance of their respective works:
nearly 150 extant manuscripts attest to the broad and international spread
of Elisabeth’s work, which reached England beginning around 1170 and at
the beginning of the 13th century was known as far as Iceland. Hildegard’s
writings during the same period were not as widely disseminated. Furthermore,
Heinzer argues that Elisabeth’s religious culture already shows
features akin to what one might call “Gothic” spirituality, while Hildegard
is still very “Romanesque.”
Justin Stover explores the links between Hildegard and the scholastic
world of the mid-12th century in “Hildegard, the Schools, and their
Critics.” Stover addresses three key questions. To what degree was Hildegard
influenced by the cosmological doctrines actively discussed in the
Rhineland in the early 12th century? What knowledge did she have of the
doctrines propounded in the schools of Paris and Chartres? What was her
own evaluation of her fellow monastics’ critiques of the scholastics and
cosmologists? Stover considers the fascinating parallels between some